Fertile Ground One-Liners

Next week, Fertile Ground Festival will present more than 60 performance works. We asked playwrights, "What’s your favorite line?" and they hit us with their zestiest zingers.
For individual performance dates and times, visit the Fertile

In New York you can’t make a living with misery. You have to resort to obscenity instead.A Live Dress by Martha Jane Kaufman

You come here every night, sing your heart out, get ‘em all worked up so they get drunk on cheap booze, smash each other with chairs and bottles, until they collapse in each other’s arms, all in a glorious belch of genuine intimacy. Sounds very fulfilling.Manful! by John Servilio

Knock it off, Man! We sit around day after day in this stinking heat, swattin’ flies and talking sh—, then something finally happens, and you get bent outta shape.Triptych Americana by Karen Alexander-Brow

Being a bit hard on The Mum today, are we?Kookaburra by AJ Doherty

Young lady, even if I wanted to be bad, it wouldn’t do me any good. Not without twenty-four hours notice and a doctor’s appointment.Dad, I Hardly Know You by Gary Corbin

I’m sorry, I, it was tougher than I thought it— Okay. Okay. I, I still need to pull his teeth though…Red Hands by Matt Haynes

Once upon a time, giants ruled the world.Splasher by Ellen Margolis

Their kidneys weren’t filtering blood; their lungs were shrinking; their brains degenerating— even their taste buds had atrophied, so naturally they volunteered. Nearly eight hundred people volunteered.Gift of a Thousand Tongues by Fengar Gael

Do you know what it’s like to ache all over and not be able to keep food down for a week at a time, and to have your aunt compliment you on the weight you’ve lost? Do you know what it’s like to be seventeen years old and go through menopause?A Pretty Girl with Cancerby Dave Chapman

Grief is a cruel master.Scrooge and Marley Have Dinner in Hell by Dave Chapman

Our backs were straight and instead of lowering our heads, we closed our eyes to the scene of our humiliation.Cafe Baghdad by Sacha Reich

I laid my head down on my desk and prayed to God that I would not be a broken manRedneck Mormon Thespian by Cory Huff

We like it, you see? The terrifying beauty of this world. The Dictators, the burning churches, beautiful monarchs with missing fingers. We crave it. We’re insatiable.(I Am Still) The Duchess of Malfi by Joseph Fisher

In conclusion, don’t forget to go to ‘changeboliviatobandivia.com’ and register your vote to give Antonio Banderas his own country—his birthday’s coming up and it would mean so much to him.One Day, a musical by Kevin Muir

We wouldn’t plan immediately. Just hang out and let an opportunity slip into our lives.Best Son by Paul Handley

The sex you had last night. The eggs you had this morning. The sound of my voice right now. At the moment of creation, all of those things existed as unrealized potential, lying in wait.Dear Galileo by Claire Willett

Just between you and me, I think you’d look quite dashing if you let me plant bananas and maybe some radishes on your neck.Skin Garden by Jeremy Benjamin

I know that this might sound strange, but I always loved olives and he, never. No, did not, would not touch them, did not like them, would not eat them. And that’s how I knew, and that is how I knew.Something’s Got a Hold of my Heart by Hand2Mouth

This might seem like a funny question to ask somebody in southern Missouri, but do you, by any chance, have access to firearms?The North Plan by Jason Wells

I can yield to anything but temptation.
-Oscar Wilde, from Famished by Eugenia Woods

Goldilocks: Bitch is a noun and a verb and I got both covered with a rap sheet to prove it.Alpha Bitch by Eugenia Woods

If we take him down to the jail and turn him in, what you think they’re gonna do? Just open the doors and let him go back to his cell? And if they do, how is hegonna get out? They killed his last hope. We don’t have money for the lawyer to try to find some loophole.Asylum No More by Sandra de Helen

What happened to the Woobbie? Soupy? Toodles, Harry, Teddy, Sue, Snuggles? We lose the ball, we drop the ball for something bigger, better, manly, the video game, baseball bat, the gun, trying to be the man. The Wild Man.Kingdowm by Nick Zagone

I’m no genius, but my short educational tenure has taught me that maybe there should be a long term commitment to ending poverty before you destroy the public education system.A Noble Failure by Susan Mach

The force of this feeling is not static. No. It is a moving energy. A fluid force. A flow. It is like the blood coursing through your veins, the blood coursing through mine. Can you feel it?Spellbinders by Brad Bolchunos

Folger snatches me up in his mighty jowls and suddenly I’m as weightless as an astronaut eating sponge cake on the moon.Last American Gladiator Part 3 by Slash Coleman

How does an 11-year old ‘nurd’, living in the middle of nowhere, act out his 007 fantasy? I find the key to my neighbor’s house…sneak in while she’s at work, and eat a bowl of Neapolitan ice cream.Teenage Commando by auGi

I like chocolate turtles with pecans. I don’t like babies much—they’re too small and you can’t eat them. Well, I guess some people might eat them… But that’s just plain sick.Ruby Rocket, Private Detective, animated film short by Sam Niemann and Stacey Hallal

The penguin is the saddest of all God’s creatures: he cannot masturbate because his arms are too short.David Saffert’s Birthday Bashstravaganza 2! Older & Wisier by David Saffert

Hundreds of miles of terrain, scrapes with death, mosquitos, eye gnats, thorns, near drownings, icy winter weather, starvation, endless rain, boiled elk fondue, difficult negotiations in which the peace of the nation hangs in the balance…how can you endure such things and still find yourself terrified by some lousy big footprints?Sacagasasquatch by Brad Bolchunos

Oh heavens to Betsy! He don’t love you. He just wants to drive your truck!Oil Change the Musical Comedy by Klay Rogers

In Portland, there are more sex clubs per capita than practically everywhere else in the nation and every year during the Rose Festival thousands of sailors get serviced here–the City looks the other way.Stories: From Survivors of the Sex Trade by Ann Singer

Yeah, there’s no ‘purity of urine’ competition in the Miss America Pageant.Graceland, Paraguay by Jason Rosenblatt

I always thought traveling by airplane was like padlocking a canary in a cage, throwing it out the window, and telling it to fly! Fly for your life!Waxwing by Emily Gregory

Are you confusing sodomy with lobotomy? Again?Satanic Organics by Jason Rosenblatt

If I was reading a novel, I’d have seen the foreshadowing; but this was my life, so I missed it.City of Roses/City of Thorns by Eileen DuClos